16 Rhodora [JANUARY 
that of a congener of S. virginiensis, namely S. granulata. Stami- 
nody has also been observed in Yucca, Asphodelus, Digitalis, Cap- 
sella, and Phaseolus. For the present species, Saxifraga virginiensis, 
it was described by Sterns! in 1887 from a colony of plants found 
on Manhattan Island. As Sterns judged that the anomaly is propa- 
gated by seed, he proposed to establish a variety, S. virginiensis, var. 
pentadecandra. In some of his plants the stamens were deformed 
and occasionally pistilloid. Going on to discuss the meaning of the 
perverted forms. the author says: “Is this identity of variation in 
S. granulata and S. Virginiensis a mere coincidence? Or have we 
here a striking case of atavism? Is this variation the recurrence, 
in the descendants, of the peculiar and long obsolete structure of 
their common ancestor? Was the progenitor of the hundred and 
sixty or more distinct Saxifragae of to-day a plant with apetalous and 
fifteen-stamened flowers? We shall never know with certainty, but 
two of its descendants testify strongly in the affirmative. I would 
even go a step farther, and hazard the conjecture that the original of 
the Saxifrages was dioecious, or at least polygamous. In the two 
perfect plants I have described the stamens were remarkably vigorous 
and well developed. In the ten or more others the stamens, as I 
have said, were singularly imperfect, and numbers of them were curi- 
ously ovary-like in appearance. Is it possible that these plants were 
blindly struggling to reproduce a primitive pistillate form ? " 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MONSTROSITIES.— Much attention has been 
given to monstrosities, and the literature of the subject is vast. A 
cursory résumé of it, up to 1890, occupies some 1106 pages in Pen- 
zig’s useful Pfanzenteratologie. The voluminousness of the record 
is attributable, first, to the interest excited in observers by the unex- 
pectedness of the phenomena; secondly and more significantly, to 
a more or less conscious assumption, widely entertained, that the 
apparent vagaries of nature when rightly understood will throw much 
light upon the morphological nature of normal plant structures and 
the modes of evolution. 
WHAT KINDS OF SIGNIFICANCE MAY MONSTROSITIES BE DEEMED 
TO possess ?— It is evident that every formation of the plant body, 
whether normal or abnormal, is an expression of the physiological 
forces operative in growth. The occurrence of an aberrant form 
! Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, 14: 122 (1887). 
